Lost and found? Supernovae interacting with stripped envelope material

by Prof. Hanindyo Kuncarayakti (UTU)

Friday 19 Dec 2025, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Core-collapse supernovae are thought to result from the explosions of massive stars. These stars are highly luminous and can undergo vigorous mass loss, removing a significant portion of their envelopes. In some cases, the hydrogen-rich envelope is removed completely, revealing the inner layers of the now stripped star. The mechanism behind this mass-loss process is still unclear -- strong stellar winds are believed to play an important role, along with interactions with a binary companion and episodic eruptions. When the star explodes as a supernova, the expanding ejecta may encounter circumstellar material (CSM) produced by prior mass loss, thereby serving as a probe of the star’s mass-loss history. Interestingly, only a small fraction of supernovae originating from stripped-envelope stars are found to harbor significant CSM. This talk will present examples of such objects, which exhibit diverse observational properties and provide clues to the still poorly understood mass-loss processes of stripped massive stars.